side is not so easy; and as to paying compliments with you for their object, they would never end; and then for poetry-but yes, as this dinner is not served à la Russe, with the fruit on the table, I think old Herrick can help me to a stanza: to you, sweet ladies all, I say, "Ye may simper, blush, and smile, and to the confectionary," continued he, bowing to the table, "I can only add, 666 But, sweet things, ye must be gone, "And so is something better too," said Lord Cheveley, kissing little Julia, who had just come into the room and clambered on his knee as was her wont. "Do you know what they told me?" said the child, throwing her little arms round his neck; "but I didn't believe it, and now I see I was right; there, stoop down your pretty little ear, and I'll tell you. Well, they told me that you were not Mr. Mowbray any more; my own dear, kind Augustus Mowbray; but that you were Lord Cheveley or Lord Something; and Mademoiselle d'Antoville said I was not to climb up upon your knee and tease you, but that I was to make you a low courtesy and say, 'Monsieur le Marquis, je vous en felicité de tout mon cœur."" And here the little thing pursed up her mouth, raised her eyebrows, and lowered her eyelids, in imitation of her governess, which set every one laughing but her father, who said, "I'm sure Mademoiselle d'Antoville would tell you not to be so loud and so rude if she were here, Julia." "Yes, papa; but, thank goodness, she is not here; so, Monsieur le Marquis, je vous en felicité de tout mon cœur," laughed the child, mimicking Mademoiselle d'Antoville more accurately than before, and burying her face on Lord Cheveley's shoulder in a peal of laughter, in which every one joined except her sire, who cried out in an angry voice, "Come, come, Julia, if you don't know how to behave yourself, you had better go to bed." From this she knew there was no appeal; and the poor little thing was preparing reluctantly to obey, when Lord Cheveley interposed. "Nay," said he, "as I go to-morrow, I must request, as an especial favour, that I and my little friend here be not separated so soon.' "Go to-morrow?" said the child; going?" "where are you "To England,” replied he, with a sigh. “Oh, then we are all going,” cried the little girl, clapping her hands; "I'm so glad." "No, not all, only me," replied Cheveley. The poor child's joy was now turned to sorrow, and she sobbed audibly as she said, "And is Prince going too? poor Prince." "Yes, you know I could as soon leave my heart behind as leave Prince." "Then do leave your heart behind; make him leave his heart and Prince, mamma," said the child, innocently turning to the sofa where her mother was lying. "Come here, Julia," said Lady de Clifford; " you are teasing Lord Cheveley;" and she hid her own blushing face against her child's as she stooped down and whispered to her to be quiet, or her papa would send her to bed. "It is time for you to call her to order, I think," said Lord de Clifford, as he rose from table and offered his arm to his mother, when they left the room together. When the dessert was taken away and the table_removed, Saville begged for some music; while he, Fanny, and Mrs. Seymour were turning over the contents of the music-stand, Major Nonplus buttoned up his coat, and fussing up to Lord Cheveley, who had drawn his chair beside Lady de Clifford's sofa, began apologizing for, and regretting an indispensable engagement that called him away. It was really provoking, that, upon the last evening of his lordship's being in their circle, and the first of her ladyship's being able again to join it, he should be complled to absent himself; "but," added he, "I assure you, you cannot regret it so much as I do." "That I am convinced of," said Cheveley, smiling, as he shook hands and wished him good-by. After the major's departure, and the laugh that followed it had subsided, an embarrassing silence ensued, which Cheveley broke by saying to Fanny, "Do, Miss Neville, have the goodness to sing that beautiful duet of Millar's, 'Loved friend, awake thy song.' "With pleasure," replied Fanny; "how very beautiful some of his music is; it is so perfectly adapted to the words." "So it is," said Cheveley; “I am a great admirer of his compositions; but did you ever hear his wife sing?" No," said Fanny; "does she sing well?" "Well is not the word; she has about the most exquisite voice I ever heard; it is so soft, so silvery, so clear. Her upper notes always give me an idea of a waterfall trinkling through sunbeams; and then she is so delicately and gracefully pretty, that one's eyes are almost as much feasted as one's ears. One of the greatest musical feasts I ever had was hearing her and her sister, Mrs. Bishop, sing together." "Dear me, you quite make me envy you," said Fanny. "Well, will you, in revenge, let me envy yoù, by hearing you sing?" asked Cheveley. And accordingly, Fanny and Saville, who had a deep, rich mellow voice, sang the beautiful duet that Lord Cheveley had asked for. When they came to the last verse, "When in days long past, I listened to thy song, too beautiful to last," Cheveley involuntarily raised his eyes to Lady de Clifford's, and mechanically repeated the words "too beautiful to last." The exquisite harmony of the last cadence had died away some minutes before he was sufficiently collected to ask them to sing something else. They good-humouredly complied by singing that sweet air from one of Blangini's Notturni, "Amor che nasci ;" even had Julia and Lord Cheveley been alone, their hearts were too full to speak. "Men shadow out the truth when they are sad; They say but ill who tell us that grief speaks but it was not then, while they were filling their hearts with last looks of each other, that they felt all the agony of grief which fate had prepared for them. Love is truly a child, to whom the present is all; who plays, and even sleeps on the brink of a precipice, and feels neither its danger nor its desolation till it awakes and finds itself alone, and that truth, faith, memory, all save the heart, remain unbroken. Though neither Cheveley nor Julia could speak themselves, everything else * Barry Cornwall. seemed to speak for them. Even Monsieur de Rivoli, who had taken up a guitar and twanged people into asking him to sing, sang, with rather more feeling than usual, that charming little romance, "Ou peut fuir sans oublier!" When he had finished, little Julia said to Lord Cheveley, "Do let poor Prince come up, as it is the last evening, to wish us good-by.' "Ou peut fuir sans oublier," said he, abstractedly patting the child's hand. "Yes, I know," replied she, "that dogs never forget; but may he come up?" "Certainly," said Cheveley, recollecting himself, and colouring as he rose to ring the bell. The dog was ordered, and five minutes afterward the poor animal came bounding into the room; and, as if it were aware that it was paying a farewell visit, it seemed to lavish its caresses doubly upon every one, but especially on Lady de Clifford, who had always been kind to it. It placed its paws upon her shoulders, and nestled its cold nose into her neck. In stooping to return its caresses, a small Trichinopoli chain that she wore round her neck got entangled in the dog's collar, and the clasp giving way by the animal suddenly jumping on the ground, he remained in possession of the chain, which his master perceiving, disentangled and dexterously concealed; then stooping to pat Prince and call him a good dog, he said in a low voice, inaudible to every ear but the one it was intended for, "Not a link is broken, nor ever shall be." But Time-relentless Time-Fate's mercuryknocks at every door, heedless whether the tidings he brings be life or death, weal or wo, and his iron tongue now tolled midnight. One after another the party had dropped off, till only Cheveley and Lady de Clifford, Fanny and Saville, remained. The two latter parted from their friend, loading him with a thousand good wishes; but neither he nor Julia spoke one word. He was to leave Venice at six in the morning; her door closed on him-was it for ever? Julia sat by her window all night. Morning at length dawned; it was dull and cold, accompanied by a deluge of rain. She felt grateful that the very clouds seemed to sympathize with her. Soon she heard the murmur of voices on the landing beneath the windows; Sanford and Prince stood at the entrance of the gondola ; presently Lord Cheveley appeared; he looked pale and hag gard; he pulled his travelling-cap over his eyes as he entered the coffin-like boat; the gondola pushed off, and Julia saw him no more! The noon of that day found Lady de Clifford in a high fever, and it was a month before she was sufficiently recovered to allow the party to pursue their journey to Naples. CHAPTER VI. "Look you, Bill, some hanimals is more difficult to poison nor hothers, 'specially if they are venomously hinclined, and fond of the world-like."-Bat-catcher's Diary. "We are all of us deceived at times, and those who do not know us much are the more deceived."-ZIMMERMAN, "I have (though a tolerably good philosopher) a low opinion of Platonic love; for which reason I thought it necessary to give my fair readers a caution against it; observing, to my great concern, the waist of a Platonist lately swell to a roundness that is inconsistent with that philosophy."-STEELE. "A gentleman of a pacific temperament, but who had somehow or other managed to incur a kicking, excused it, by forcibly arguing that a ་ man can no more help what is done behind his back, than what is said."" BEAUTIFUL Naples ! whose sapphire waves flow on in music, and whose flower-heathed air laughs out in sunshine, as if primeval Eden's youth still lingered on thy shores, mocking at sin and time! Beautiful Naples ! Venus of cities rising from the sea-begirt with beauty like a zone, and diademed with palaces !-shall I ever again behold you? No, never, at least as I beheld you once, for to the winter of the heart no second spring succeeds! The journey to Naples had been performed by slow and easy stages. Still Lady de Clifford was so weak, that they had been there a month before she felt able to take a drive. Their apartments at the "Victoria" faced the Villa Reale, and the only progress that she had made towards convalescence was having her chair wheeled to her window, and inhaling the air of its de |